Sources: Sandy Hook 911 tapes reveal cops told to 'wait'

Updated 3:54 pm, Thursday, November 21, 2013

A memorial at a house near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Sandy Hook, Conn. on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013 commemorates the lives of the 20 students and six staff members were killed at the school on Dec. 14.

A bus traveling from Newtown, Conn., to Monroe stops in front of 26 angels erected along the roadside on the first day of classes for Sandy Hook Elementary School students since the Dec. 14 shooting rampage.
Photo: Jessica Hill, FRE

A bus traveling from Newtown, Conn., to Monroe stops in front of 26...

A hand-crafted wooden ribbon stands in front of Jay's Firewood and Tree Service, near the former Chalk Hill School in Monroe, to show support for the Sandy Hook Elementary School students who came to the school from Newtown, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2012.
Photo: Nanci Hutson

Adrian Szepietowski, from left, Guy Veneruso, Craig Schultz and Len Sabia places stars onto the roof of the Sandy Hook fire house during the installation of 26 stars at the station's roof Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, in Newtown, Conn. The stars were made and installed by a group of local contractors, led by Greg Gnandt, to honor the memory of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Photo: Brett Coomer, Brett Coomer/Hearst Newspapers

Christmas stockings hang on the fence near Sandy Hook Cemetary near the site of a makeshift memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012, in Newtown.
Photo: Brett Coomer, Brett Coomer/Hearst Newspapers

A wooden angel honoring the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting are part of a makeshift memorial near the school Friday, Dec. 28, 2012, in Newtown.
Photo: Brett Coomer, Brett Coomer/Hearst Newspapers

Workers use backhoes to dig through the rubble as the demolition of Sandy Hook Elementary School continues, Monday, Oct. 28, 2013, in Newtown, Conn. Workers have begun demolishing the building where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults. The project will take several weeks. Newtown has accepted a $50 million state grant to raze the building and build a new school, expected to open by December 2016. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Photo: Jessica Hill, Associated Press

Workers use backhoes to dig through the rubble as the demolition of...

A security guard opens the gate to the old Sandy Hook Elementary School Monday, Oct. 14, 2013, to allow cars to leave the site.
Photo: Carol Kaliff

Carmen Faria, of Miami, kneels at the site where a makeshift memorial once stood near Sandy Hook Elementary School Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012, in Newtown.
Photo: Brett Coomer, Brett Coomer/Hearst Newspapers

NEWTOWN, CT - DECEMBER 16: Twenty seven wooden stand in a yard down the street from the Sandy Hook School December 16, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six people were shot dead, including twenty children, after a gunman identified as Adam Lanza opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Lanza also reportedly had committed suicide at the scene. A 28th person, believed to be Nancy Lanza, found dead in a house in town, was also believed to have been shot by Adam Lanza. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images

NEWTOWN, CT - DECEMBER 16: Twenty seven wooden stand in a yard...

NEWTOWN, CT - DECEMBER 16: Teddy bears, flowers and candles in memory of those killed, are left at a memorial down the street from the Sandy Hook School December 16, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six people were shot dead, including twenty children, after a gunman identified as Adam Lanza opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Lanza also reportedly had committed suicide at the scene. A 28th person, believed to be Nancy Lanza, found dead in a house in town, was also believed to have been shot by Adam Lanza. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images

NEWTOWN, CT - DECEMBER 16: Teddy bears, flowers and candles in...

A man walks by a makeshift shrine to the victims of an elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, December 17, 2012. Funerals began Monday in the little Connecticut town of Newtown after the school massacre that took the lives of 20 small children and six staff, triggering new momentum for a change to America's gun culture. The first burials, held under raw, wet skies, were for two six-year-old boys who were among those shot in Sandy Hook Elementary School. On Tuesday, the first of the girls, also aged six, was due to be laid to rest. There were no Monday classes at all across Newtown, and the blood-soaked elementary school was to remain a closed crime scene indefinitely, authorities said. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel DUNAND
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images
Photo: EMMANUEL DUNAND, AFP/Getty Images

A man walks by a makeshift shrine to the victims of an elementary...

A U.S. flag flies at half staff outside the Newtown High School before President Barack Obama is scheduled to attend a memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. A gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Photo: AP

The head of the Newtown Police Union said that the order for first responders to wait before entering Sandy Hook Elementary School was directed toward ambulance personnel, not police officers.

Union president Scott Ruszczyk said it is "standard protocol not to send in unarmed people to a scene that is not secure."

Questions about the police department's response to the mass shooting surfaced after two sources told Hearst Connecticut Newspapers on Wednesday that 911 calls between the school and emergency dispatchers indicated someone at police headquarters ordered officers to "wait until you go into the building" where gunman Adam Lanza killed 26 people, 20 of them first-grade students.

Ruszczyk said he knows for a fact that the order was directed at medical personnel "because I spoke to the person who gave it." Ruszczyk said the person was a Newtown sergeant, but he declined to name him, saying he was not authorized to speak to that aspect of the investigation.

"I want to defend our union members," he said. "I know the quality of the people who were there."

Previously, a Newtown law enforcement source who was at the scene of the second-deadliest school shooting in the nation's history said officers who had entered the building told dispatchers they had found bodies, but not to send the EMTs in because they had not yet located the gunman.

STAFF REPORT

NEWTOWN -- There are no anguished cries of children in the controversial 911 telephone recordings of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

But there is the sound of two apparent rifle shots, according to sources who have listened to about nine calls made to Newtown police on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012.

The most disconcerting sound between the school and Newtown police may be the apparent order from headquarters for police responders to "wait" before entering the school, Hearst Connecticut Newspapers has learned.

"Wait until you go into the building," one person says from police headquarters toward the end of the five-minute shooting spree. "I'm not going to send them in yet."

Both sources said it was unclear why the apparent order was given to delay police from going into the school.

A Newtown law enforcement source who was at the scene, however, said the order to wait was directed at ambulance personnel, and that police entered the school as soon as they arrived.

The law enforcement source, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about the investigation, said officers in the building told dispatchers they had not yet located the shooter, so sending in medical personnel would have put more lives in danger.

Messages left for Danbury State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III and Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe were not returned. State police spokesman Master Sgt. Donna Tadiello said she couldn't talk about the 911 tapes and was unable to reach either Col. Dan Stebbins or Public Safety Commissioner Reuben Bradford Wednesday evening.

"At this point, I'm not able to make a comment," Tadiello said.

The first call came around the time Adam Lanza, 20, shot his way into the school at about 9:45 a.m.

"Somebody's shooting in here ... Sandy Hook School, please!" says one of the first calls to Newtown police headquarters at 3 Main St., located 3.1 miles from the school.

Another early call comes from a woman who says she's in a classroom at the front, left side of the building. In all, the sources said the recordings run about 40 minutes.

The flood of frantic calls from land lines -- cellphones automatically connected with the State Police in Southbury -- apparently deluged the two emergency dispatchers in Newtown. At one point in the recordings, the dispatchers fail to answer a call and the phone rings for 30 seconds or more, the sources recalled.

At another point, Rick Thorne, a school custodian who has declined comment on the shooting but who has been hailed for alerting staff to Lanza's assault-weapon rampage, is disconnected by dispatchers.

"It was weird that they hung up on him," said one source who listened to the recordings. Another source who heard the 911 recordings agreed.

Both sources said they were not sure of the context in which Thorne was disconnected.

"There's a shooting going on," Thorne says during one of the first calls to police. "I keep hearing shooting."

In one of the last calls, Thorne says, "I'm standing in a corner not knowing what to do. I'm a custodian. The shootings happened five minutes ago."

These recordings are among the historic record of the Newtown murders.

Recordings of 911 calls are routinely released after most major criminal incidents, but Sedensky is attempting to keep the recordings private in a case pending before Judge Eliot D. Prescott at state Superior Court in New Britain.

The 911 recordings from Newtown are the kind of information that public records advocates and the media say are crucial in examining the police response to the state's worst mass murder.

The 20 first-graders and six adults in the school were killed by multiple gunshots from Lanza's Bushmaster XM-15 military-style rifle before he shot himself with a 10-mm Glock handgun.

Lanza fired 154 bullets in the school, according to an interim report issued by Sedensky and Chief State's Attorney Kevin T. Kane on March 28.

Last week, families of the slain children and educators reviewed a 40-page summary of the slaughter and were told that Sedensky will release the document to the media Monday.

But recordings of first responders at the scene, who described the carnage in graphic detail, will be kept secret until at least next May as part of a bill that passed on the last day of the legislative session in June.

There are also thousands of pages of investigative details in the possession of the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.

Prescott, who listened to the 911 recordings on compact disc, is scheduled to rule Monday on Sedensky's appeal of a September decision by the state Freedom of Information Commission, which ordered the release of the recordings.

The recordings remain under seal in the New Britain Superior Court clerk's office, pending a hearing on Monday in Prescott's courtroom, allowing members of the public to comment on the issue of releasing them.

Following the hearing, Prescott is expected to listen to the recordings and rule on the dispute.